Several people have recently started testing xorg-x11 as a replacement for xfree.
In support of that, it might be useful to collect user experiences as they come in, in order
to build a picture of what this xfree-4.4+ replacement looks like. (For now, we are talking
x11-base/xorg-x11-6.7.0 here.)

Some preliminary remarks in no particular order:

You will also have to install x11-terms/xterm-184 and sys-apps/utempter-0.5.3.2-r1 (this will happen automatically);

The 19776 libGL segfault problems are gone. Essentially, xorg-x11 incorporates the huge patch which is the final attachment to this bug;

Fonts are moved from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts to /usr/share/fonts (as is also
the case with xfree-4.3.0-r6 and beyond);

After install, you must run 'opengl-update xorg-x11'

The "official" config file is xorg.conf, but XF86Config will still work;

The Microsoft fonts are not included.

Doubtless many other things which all of you will remind me of or correct me on.

As well as comments regarding reliability and robustness, I am particularly interested
in the following sorts of things:

Appearance. How your various favorite applications, browsers, window managers,
and so on look to you compared with xfree;

Of course, I have some observations from a U60+Elite3D-m3, but they
are very preliminary. So, in order not to bias you one way or the other,
at this time I am not disclosing them. (Yes, I know that's a cop out )

This is a good idea. I have been curious about what other people think about xorg-x11. Ironically enough, I was just thinking about giving it a test spin. I'll be sure and post what I think once I get a chance to test it out._________________Gentoo...it's like wiping your ass with silk. Or sandpaper.

Most applications should have already been fixed to use the virtual/x11 dependency (which xorg-x11 provides). If you find one that hasn't been fixed, please file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org and let us know.

Thanks. That helps confirm that right now, with an Elite at least, the
performance of xorg+glx is pretty bad compared with xfree-4.3.0 (if you can
make it run).

For example, if you run that same xorg-glxgears over a network to an Xfree
system, you will see about twice that performance.

Another example, if you grab Mesa-6.0.1 from Mesa3D.org and replace
the '-mv8' with '-mcpu=ultrasparc' in the build path for sparc-ultra-linux
(or some permutation on that), the resulting libGL as a drop-in replacement
for xorg-glx will give a huge performance boost.

Bottom line: For Elite, at least, there is a tremendous penalty if you get at
opengl like this -- Program+libGL <--> Xorg <--> Mesa -- which is not present
in xfree. Indeed, either of these gives better performance:

Program+libGL <--> LAN <--> xfree <--> Mesa

Program+Mesa-libGL <--> Xorg

I do not know yet if the same is true of Creator or not. We'll all find out, though.
(Creator takes a somewhat different path through libGL, because it can
do dri/drm. It's just that the xfree/xorg module to do that for the ffb is
broken. Still, as I recall, it ends up using different logic.)

Notice that inserting Xorg between the program using opengl and opengl itself
makes little sense with an Elite, because Elite does not do dri/drm. So if
you have an Elite, you probably want to ba able to opengl-update mesa
or such-like anyway.

That's a whole lot more information than I am sure of. I'm using this
thread as a place to collect information and to keep my working notes.
Sorry about that.

I was using whatever the last 4.399 version was before I screwed up my install. Xine played with a lot of pink noise in it. (Like the overlay was peeking through) Using XV or any other video technique.

Anyone gotten DRM working on the ATI framebuffers?_________________Inspiron 4100 & Sun UltraAXe
Portage on Solaris|Dell Laptop Hacks
The way you feel about organized religion is the same way I feel about organized socialism.

To answer myself somewhat. With xorg-x11, U2+Creator, glxgears's performance is
unchanged. So we are looking at an Elite-only problem with the performance degradation.
Doubtless because Elite does not even try to do DRM.